


Monopoly is Banned for A Reason, Alya

by GuardianKarenTerrier



Series: we should have just played scrabble, now we're losing at jumanji [2]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: A Very Brief Zombie Apocalypse, Dimension Hopping Akuma, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Humor, Legend of Zelda References, Marinette and Adrien's still extremely frustrated friends, Sort Of, Team Bonding, Teamwork, Zombies, the definite beginnings of an OT4 but not enough to tag for yet, this makes NO SENSE without reading the other fic in the series first
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-26
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-18 00:54:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16107365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuardianKarenTerrier/pseuds/GuardianKarenTerrier
Summary: It's probably not an accident, this time.Alya thought things would be easier, now, but her friends are stubborn and Hawkmoth is a jerk and this isn't what she meant by game night. This isn't what anyone meant by game night.At least if she plays her cards right she'll have a cool sword for a while.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is directly a sequel to Nino Has Done Nothing To Deserve This and oh man, is it ever not going to make any sense without it. i'm not willing to promise it'll make sense _with_ it, i was originally writing this part solely for myself so it's... a little wild.  
>  current game: dead of winter (which i, like alya, have played all of half a round of, so you do not need familiarity with it. it's zombies, is the important part).

It's probably not an accident.

It could be, or at least the timing could be, but it probably isn't.

Their game nights are technically a secret, but Alya's posted too many cautious photos and videos to the Ladyblog by now for Paris to be entirely unaware that they have them; one of those photos is of all four heroes playing Risk. One of them is of Chat Noir, the least colourful of them, cheerfully cheating at a game of Twister (at some point they stopped using the mat entirely- there are plenty of colours around and on them). There's a twenty second video of Rena Rouge laughing hysterically at a round of Cards Against Humanity (which she posted because for safety reasons she couldn't take a video of the way Adrien and Plagg's argument was broken up when Nino flicked on the laser pointer to distract them both, which is a shame, because it's the funniest thing Alya's ever seen). So... Paris definitely knows about the game nights. Hawkmoth probably knows about the game nights.

Alya wonders in a moment of dismayed bewilderment if Hawkmoth is subscribed to her blog.

"Well, this is different," Marinette says slowly, turning in a circle to try and see where they are. Alya, frankly, still has no idea where they are. They had been in the apartment a minute ago, laughing and talking and throwing popcorn at each other, and she'd had a mug of hot chocolate a minute ago, too, and she'd really like that back, actually, wherever they are it is _freezing_.

Deciding against staying down and trying to get her bearings any longer, Alya groans and sits up. "This is not fair, we were winning."

"Firstly, no, no we weren't," Marinette says, not dropping her guard. "We hadn't been playing long enough for anyone to be winning. And if anyone _was_ winning I think it was Plagg. Secondly, I'm pretty sure no one planned for surprise akuma attack during game night."

"You know," Alya says, climbing to her feet and also looking warily around. "We probably should have. I mean, it seems like a matter of time kind of thing." It's _really_ cold. That can't be good for Marinette. Frankly, it's not good for Alya. They weren't exactly dressed for it, either, they'd been settled in for the evening with their games and with each other and she'd even gotten the mini marshmallows for the hot chocolate. She's not sure Adrien's ever had mini marshmallows in his hot chocolate, and she knows Trixx hasn't because she'd asked; Alya was really looking forward to their reactions.

Nino and Adrien had already been in their pajamas.

This is not how she wanted to spend her evening.

While Alya's still rubbing her hands together and bitterly wishing their hot drinks had been transported along with them, come on Hawkmoth, is that so much to ask, Marinette sighs and appears to choose a direction at random to head off in.

"Whoa, wait, girl, slow down," Alya says, jogging quickly after her. "Do we even know where we are yet?"

"Well," Marinette says, waving vaguely around at their surroundings. "The ice and snow aren't a great sign."

"Ye-ah." Alya spins in a slow circle as she continues to trot next to Marinette, who looks- well, she's shivering, but she doesn't look as badly affected by the cold as Alya feared.  It's a weird sort of cold, anyway; it _is_ freezing but it's not quite affecting them like it should. Alya's not shivering at all, for example, so Marinette might only be shivering because lower temperatures always hit her a lot harder than they do the rest of them. "What happened? Whose ass do we kick? Besides Hawkmoth, I am always up for kicking Hawkmoth's ass. On a totally unrelated note, d'you think Hawkface is subscribed to the Ladyblog? Because I'm not sure how to code 'do not allow supervillains to subscribe,' but I'd love to learn."

Marinette throws her arm out suddenly and Alya slams into it. "What the hell-Marinette, I was joking-well, mostly-"

"Quiet," Marinette hisses, eyes narrowed, and Alya promptly stops talking.

Whenever Marinette starts channeling Ladybug like this Alya can see _exactly_ what it is Adrien loves about her. Also, Alya can see someone with a better idea than her about what's going on, so she shuts up.

"Alya get behind me," Marinette says, all in a rush, very quietly. Followed by, "Did Nino have Wayzz tonight?"

"No," Alya says slowly, keeping her voice down and moving to Marinette's side rather than behind her, pretending she doesn't see the look that earns her. She doesn't put up with the self-sacrifice routine from Chat Noir, she's not putting up with it from Ladybug, either. "And Trixx was with Plagg and Tikki. I mean, technically. I mean, we were all in the same room, anyway." Her brows furrow. "With- all of us were in the same room, actually, except Wayzz. Why, where do you think the rest of us are?"

Marinette scans around them as she says, "They're here, somewhere. Maybe not Trixx, but everyone else."

"What?" Alya says, louder than she means to. Marinette hisses- she has definitely been hanging out with Adrien and Plagg too much- so Alya lowers her voice again and says urgently, "Why not Trixx? Marinette, where's my kwami?"

"If we're where I think we are?" Marinette points at something that looms, ominously, in the distance- a vague, looming, dilapidated structure, with boarded-over doors and windows, nearly obscured by the swirling snow. It is, in fact, almost cartoonishly ominous.  "Then Trixx is in Hyrule."

"What?" Alya exclaims, which is when the first zombie lunges at her.

Alya can't even figure out where it _came_ _from_ , it's just _there._

Currently civilians or not, they both know how to fight and when to flee, so as Alya dodges the attack Marinette drives her fist into the dead man's stomach and then drags Alya away before the zombie can choke up blood on them.

"At least we weren't playing Pandemic," Marinette pants as they reach the dubious safety of the building.

Game night. Hyrule. They're in their game.

Their unfortunately zombie-themed game.

Tonight would have been a good night for Twister. Alya's pretty sure there's no way to trap someone in Twister. Is there? Wait, maybe they'd just end up sticking to random colours if they'd been playing Twister and- wow she can't believe she has to actually _think_ about that. Thanks, Hawkmoth. Contemplating living games of Twister is _exactly_ how Alya wanted to spend her Saturday night and oh, man, that sounded way creepier than she expected it to. 

Already prying away a board long enough for them to duck under it and into cover, Alya mutters, "And they banned Monopoly. You know what we would have been safer playing? Monopoly, we would have been safer with Monopoly.  I will take Park Place over zombies, Mari! I will absolutely throw down with the Monopoly guy! I would _love_ to throw down with the Monopoly guy!"

"Monopoly is banned for a reason, Alya," Marinette says breathlessly, twisting to slam the board back in place just in time- she slams a graying arm back outside with it. "Where are we, is this the stronghold? The safehouse? Whatever it was called?"

"I bet Hawkmoth looks like the Monopoly guy," Alya hisses, viciously, throwing the board back down, scanning their surroundings, and wishing fervently they had played a different game tonight. Would blackjack have been safer? No, that probably would have gotten them into some stupid Alice in Wonderland scenario, which- actually does sound better than zombies, but like hell does she trust Hawkmoth with a world based that heavily in math. Alya's been increasingly frustrated with her physics homework as it is, because she's been up late working on it one too many times before an akuma attack that just _clearly defies_ all of said physics. _She_ defies said physics.  They all do and it is _exhausting_ to keep track of which rules apply at any given time.  

And of course they were playing Dead of Winter when the inevitable akuma hit. Dead of Winter is full of zombies and has a very long, complicated set up. They have never actually finished a round before. Tonight was going to be their first serious playthrough.

Alya should have talked them into Monopoly.  She even has the Paris' Superhero version. It's extremely unofficial and divided by their 'colours,' despite the fact that they don't exactly _have_ colours (Plagg and Nino have a _disagreement_ about who's entitled to green), and the play tokens are their animals. Nino hates it.  Alya put up links to it on the Ladyblog. Nino hates that, too.

"This is the school," Alya informs Marinette tiredly, tilting her head back to eye the less-than-sturdy ceiling. "Which is where I was planning on going, but we weren't even at your turn."

"Okay, so." Marinette moves away from the door, waving Alya down the hallway ahead of her. Somehow, probably from their less than dignified entrance, Marinette has already acquired a rather jagged board with rusty nails sticking out of it. Alya eyes the board warily before she starts further into the school.  She's glad it isn't modeled on their own school- an open courtyard sounds, right now, like the worst architectural idea she's ever heard, even though she's usually pretty fond of it. In theory it gives them another escape route. True, in practice that hasn't worked out essentially ever, but it's still technically a sound theory. "Let's review, we had only just started playing Dead of Winter, which we have still never actually finished a round of before."

"Yes," Alya says, glancing around in search of a weapon of her own. In lieu of anything better, she picks up a broken bit of chair until she can upgrade. She could have taken Trixx up on her offer of video games, too. She could both have her kwami with her _and_ be playing Super Smash Brothers. She could be Rena Rouge with a Smash Bat right now, she could have the Master Sword or a Megaton Hammer, but no, she is spending her Saturday night in a zombie-infested school because Hawkmoth is an asshole and- damn it, Marinette is trying to go through a mission briefing right now. Which are. A thing they have. Even this much later, Alya's still not quite used to that idea. "And only me and Sunshine had even taken our turns yet."

"Right!" Marinette's eyes light up fiercely. "So we know where Chat Noir is likely to be. Once we meet up with him, we can find the others a lot more easily."

"Um," Alya says, watching as Marinette veers into an open classroom and kneels in the wreckage of a desk to rummage around. "How do you figure that, exactly?  He doesn't have Plagg with him, either."

"As far as you know, he doesn't," Marinette counters, leaning back to toss Alya a baseball bat (what kind of school is this) before turning back to the debris and coming up with a knife for herself ( _what kind of school is this_ ). Marinette rips off part of her overshirt and uses it to strap the board to her back, rusty nails facing threateningly outwards. "I'm actually pretty sure he does."

Catching the bat awkwardly, Alya clears her throat. "No, we kind of do know he doesn't? Because Tikki and Trixx aren't with us?"

"Trixx was playing a different game altogether," Marinette points out. "And Tikki and I had agreed to play separately. Plagg and Adrien?" She grins. "Trust me, they made an alliance before we started.  And if _we_ showed up together, even though we hadn't gotten that far in the actual game..." She shrugs, tossing the knife into the air and catching it easily. That's both kind of alarming and kind of making Alya have the kind of thoughts she's going to have to have a conversation with Nino about later. Again.

Alya eyes Marinette. "You are _way_ too calm about this."

Marinette waves the knife nonchalantly. "This isn't the first dimensional akuma _or_ the first zombie akuma we've seen."

"Yeah, that zombie thing?" Alya pulls Marinette back to her feet and they start down a different hallway.  "That didn't work out so great for everyone, Mari." Though they had been some of the last standing. Alya's choosing to be proud of that, damn it. Chloe doesn't count- Chloe is clearly some kind of hellish eternal escort mission with a terrible AI interface.

Yeah, okay, maybe Alya's adjusting to the idea of running around inside their games a little too quickly.

"Worked out pretty well for me," Marinette says, before reaching back and cutting her pigtails with the knife in a single smooth, practiced motion. Large portions of her pigtails flutter to the floor, leaving her face framed in soft black hair as it fluffs out.

Alya yelps, a strangled noise she promptly decides to pretend never, ever happened.

"You should consider cutting yours," Marinette says. "Don't want anything they can grab, and it'll grow back with Lucky Charm later.  Adrien was at the hospital, we should head there first. If he hasn't come to meet us he should have some supplies. Nino and Tikki are _probably_ at the stronghold, depending on if they were teaming up with anyone else."

"I don't think that's even a mechanic this game _has_ ," Alya mutters under her breath, thoroughly unnerved. Raising her voice, she says, "Do you... did you and Chat Noir just, like, make zombie apocalypse plans? For fun?"

"After Zombizou?" Marinette doesn't look back, shoving open a door to a staircase and beginning to climb. Alya is a little concerned that they're heading _up_ to get to another building while neither of them can transform. "I mean, not just for fun anymore, at that point. Didn't you?" She jumps over several missing stairs and pivots to offer Alya a hand.

Taking it and letting Marinette help haul her up the broken stairs, Alya says, "No? That's kind of nuts?" That's a lie she and Nino have extensive plans written out and she's going to have to hide them someplace other than the apartment after this. Those plans involve the first step being grabbing Marinette and Adrien _before_ they can get themselves killed being heroes. Alya's still very much assuming Marinette and Adrien are going to object to that, but if there are _zombie_ -zombies she's getting her friends clear _first_ and deciding on the next steps _afterwards_ when they're all safe.

This is not the kind of zombie scenario those plans are for.

Also, Alya really kind of hates that she has to specify _zombie-_ zombies even in her own head.

In response, Marinette gestures wordlessly at their surroundings.

"Well, it seemed nuts," Alya amends. Then, eager to change the subject (because if Marinette stops to think about she's going to realise how absolutely out of character it is for Alya _not_ to have a zombie apocalypse plan), "Wait, did you say you've seen a dimension-hopping akuma?" Does Prime Queen count? Wait, does _she_ count? Alya's not inclined to consider jumping through phone screens that way but she's probably biased.  

"Yeah, I mean for example that's kind of what we assume Pixelator's powers actually did, though he didn't actually get me," Marinette says absently, shoving open the door to the roof. "But ask Adrien sometime about getting trapped with Chloe and Fang."

"Fang?" Alya hops over another stair to follow Marinette outside, even though that doesn't seem like a great idea to her. Not only is it a frozen wasteland outside (emphasis on frozen) but, well, zombies. There's sun and daylight, but somehow that's actually worse- the sun isn't providing warmth so much as reminding them of its absence, and they're at risk of snow blindness besides. "Jagged Stone's crocodile Fang?"

"Yeah, you know, Fang." Marinette shrugs.  "Honestly, that could have gone worse."

"How could it have gone worse than getting trapped with Chloe and a literal crocodile?" Chloe _and_ a crocodile. Nobody deserves that, least of all Adrien. The _crocodile_ doesn't deserve that.

Marinette raises an eyebrow and her knife and points down below the building. "I can think of a few ways."

"I mean, Chloe being here would still be worse." Alya glances down and regrets it immediately. Thankfully there aren't that many zombies down there, clawing at the walls and moaning, but Alya's preferred number of zombies in the area is _none_ , thanks. She shivers. "You know, game night is supposed to be for relaxing."

Marinette shrugs again as she scans the horizon. "Trixx might be relaxing."

"Trixx was playing Ocarina of Time," Alya retorts. "I am jealous of Trixx right now."

"Trixx had just gotten back to Castle Town," Marinette says dryly. "I don't know if jealous is the word I would use."

"Seven years of sleep sounds _great_ , Mari. Seven years of sleep sounds goddamn amazing and also, super relaxing!" Technically there are probably also zombies in Castle Town, depending on how far along Trixx had been, but there would be _fewer_ zombies and she would have a magic sword. Or. Okay, so more realistically, Marinette or Adrien would have a magic sword. It's a Zelda game, it's full of weapons, Alya would be happy with any of them. Also there are magical ocarinas and _Alya has a flute_. She deeply regrets not joining Trixx's gaming session for the night.

"Sure, and then we can wake up to knowing Hawkmoth won seven years ago while we all slept."  Marinette cleans the knife on her shirt before holding it up and angling it back and forth under the sun's harsh glare. "Also, please don't make me compare to Hawkmoth to Ganondorf, it's awful and I hate it."

"Does that make you Sheik or Link?" Alya watches with interest as light flashes off the blade.

"Sheik, thanks," Marinette returns. "I'll take being the badass disguised ninja rebel fighter over seven years of sleep."

The seven years of stasis also suits Adrien's situation better, but Alya definitely knows better than to say that out loud around Marinette. Alya sighs and wanders to a corner of the roof, kicking at the rubble; she's not entirely sure what to do with herself right now without Trixx here. She wonders what Nino's doing, aside from freaking out; she thinks he'd been plotting to team up with Tikki. Right now, honestly, she _hopes_ he was; she's definitely glad that she's here with Marinette and not alone. She doesn't particularly want any of the others to be here alone.

She doesn't particularly want any of them to be here at all but, well.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> current game: dead of winter

"What if they don't see your signal?" Alya asks, wandering back over to Marinette.  
  
"We keep trying, probably," Marinette says. "It's not really safe to head back out without Tikki or Chat Noir."  
  
"You're that sure Adrien and Plagg will be together?" Alya says, raising an eyebrow.  
  
"I'm sure." Marinette flashes the knife again; she's settled into a rhythm with it. Alya's not up on her Morse code yet, certainly not the way Adrien and Marinette are, but she knows enough to recognise SOS when she sees it. "They always team up the first few times we play anything."  
  
"They do?" Alya says, not even trying to keep the surprise from her voice.  
  
"Yeah." Marinette keeps signaling, but she finds a place on the roof to sit down, angling herself carefully to avoid the board she still has strapped to her back. "Chat Noir's still not really used to playing games with, you know, other people."  
  
Alya knocks away debris with her bat so she can sit down next to her friend, holding in a sigh. This is a _thing_ Marinette does sometimes- refers to Adrien as Chat Noir whenever she can. He usually is transformed whenever she's referring to, if only because he's usually transformed when he can get away with it, so it does make sense. It's technically a good thing because they don't want to risk calling out the wrong names at any time, but it's a little exasperating when it isn't like Alya doesn't know _exactly who they both are_.  
  
But, well, there's also a reason they still mostly talk while one or both of them is transformed. Even now, even though they're a lot better now, there's somehow still a different dynamic between Ladybug and Chat Noir than there is between Marinette and Adrien. Even more importantly than that, there's still a vast difference between how comfortable Adrien actually _is_ between when he is and isn't transformed. Sometimes Alya kind of thinks that if Adrien could just stay Chat Noir forever he might do it, which is a frightening thought.  
  
Although sometimes Alya does have entirely too much fun picturing all of them attending class transformed. The absolutely ludicrous levels of their magical shielding means they could probably get _away_ with that, too, if they don't mind their civilian selves being marked absent or Hawkmoth crashing their class with an akuma. But then he does that anyway.  
  
Marinette paused while Alya found a seat, but she continues now. "He usually does ask Plagg to team up with him the first time we play so that he's not, you know, quite as anxious about it."  
  
"Why don't you ask Tikki to do that more?" slips out before Alya can stop it. Adrien may be the one who gets anxious about social situations, sometimes, but Marinette is anxious about- well, everything, sometimes.  
  
At least it's only _sometimes_ , these days. They've both been getting better about that, too. Marinette doesn't catastrophize half as much as she used to, but then, it would be difficult for her to keep fretting over unlikely scenarios involving Adrien when the four of them spend all their time together.  
  
Difficult, definitely. But, as Alya has learned to her dismay, _not impossible_.  
  
Marinette sighs and kicks at some of the nearer debris. "What makes you think I don't?" She slumps down as she flashes the knife again. "This time I asked you. Sometimes I ask Tikki. Pretty much always, if we're both transformed, I ask Chat Noir."  
  
Alya blinks, taking a long moment to absorb that. Then a longer moment to wrestle with her frustration that even when these two idiots go to _each other_ for support they stress out about it. "I didn't think you were that anxious anymore."  
  
"You didn't think Chat Noir was, either," Marinette points out. "Well, we both are." She flips the knife before signaling. "We just… can't be, except with each other."  
  
"And with us," Alya reminds her, exasperated. "And with your kwami!"  
  
"I know that, Alya. We both know that." Marinette tilts her head back and stares at the dead, dull sky. "If we didn't, we wouldn't have been at the apartment every night the past two weeks."  
  
"It hasn't been every night," Alya begins, and then stops when she sees Marinette's lips curve down. "You've seriously been here- there, shit, that's confusing- every night?"  
  
"Both of us, for the past couple weeks, yeah." Marinette flips the knife into her other hand to flash it in a slightly different direction. "And no, I'm not doing better at dealing with… everything about Adrien. About knowing Chat Noir is Adrien."  
  
"Girl, you just said you've spent every night for two weeks with him," Alya says, incredulous, and right back to being frustrated. There was supposed to be less frustration in her life once her friends weren't keeping secrets from each other, _not more_. Alya would like to file a complaint because they took two huge steps forward the night they all had an inadvertent identity reveal party, and then they somehow took _three enormous leaps back._  
  
Marinette huffs out a laugh. "Not like that, Alya! I haven't been spending the night with Adrien, I've been staying with my _partner_ because he's my best friend and he needs the company."  
  
Alya wisely does not comment on that.  
  
It takes a great deal of self-restraint.  
  
"He still isn't sleeping well and Plagg doesn't like to keep up the transformation at night," Marinette says. "He did sometimes before, you know. Chat Noir's slept at my place kind of a lot. He started out on the balcony, but I ran into him out there, and he ended up sleeping on the chaise lounge, sometimes, too. Well. Kind of a lot of times."  
  
"He's _what_?" Alya says. "How is it that I didn't know that? Mari, what happened to best friend privileges?"  
  
"You're the Ladyblogger?" Marinette says. "And he didn't want anyone to know?"  
  
"Excuse me, I'm also Rena Rouge?" Alya says indignantly. "Also, I don't care if he _is_ the sunshine child, if he was seriously ashamed of you I will go kick him in the face myself." Not that she can really bring herself to believe that Adrien could ever be ashamed of Marinette, but the protective older sister side of her still needs a little clarification, here.  
  
"Not of me," Marinette says hastily. "He didn't want anyone to know he needed help." She scowls and twists back towards Alya. "He didn't want _me_ to know he needed help, either, but he landed on my balcony one night because he didn't know where else to go."  
  
"Well, of course he went to Ladybug," Alya says. That seems obvious enough to her. She's still barely seen them apart when they're transformed. She thinks at least half the reason they're still transformed so often at the apartment is that they're both that much more _tactile_ when they're transformed. She's had to struggle not to make jokes about magnetic attraction.  
  
It's really not fair. This was supposed to be easier, once they knew.  
  
"You're not listening," Marinette says. "He landed on my balcony, back before he knew it was me."  
  
Alya raises both eyebrows, because sure, _she's_ the one who isn't listening. Her friends are the most oblivious people she's ever met, and that's taking into account that she is _entirely_ too aware of the rest of Paris magically not noticing said friends transforming in parks and classrooms and right in the middle of a busy street that one time, yes she _saw_ that, Nino- "You mean back before you told him it was you."  
  
"That's what I just said!"  
  
"No it isn't," Alya counters. "Do you have any idea what it's like, watching the two of you? Listening to you?" She slumps sideways into Marinette, cautious of the gleaming knife, cautious of the board. It's astounding how quickly Marinette made herself sharp and dangerous even as a civilian. Alya forgets, frequently, that she hasn't actually known Marinette that long, that they haven't actually been friends for the lifetime and a half that it feels like; she's not sure if her friend was like this before Hawkmoth, or if it's one of those traits that goes along with Marinette and Adrien's nightmares and hypervigilance and stubborn, clinging loyalty to each other. They weren't meant to be fighting a war at fourteen. "Or what it's like fighting with you? The _fighting,_ holy shit, that is- that is a _struggle,_ Marinette."  
  
"I thought you liked fighting with us," Marinette says, a little bit defensively, just barely beginning to curl in on herself, and Alya hears the unspoken 'I thought you liked _us._ '  
  
"Don't get me wrong, I love it," Alya assures her hastily, fervently, leaning hard into her own unspoken 'I love you.' "Trixx is one of the best things that's ever happened to me."  
  
"Don't let Trixx hear that they're only one of your best things," Marinette teases her, relaxing again.  
  
"You and Nino and Sunshine and your kwami are also some of my best things," Alya says firmly. "Which Trixx knows and understands. But that isn't the point, I see you changing the subject. So you didn't know Adrien is Chat Noir." It still feels wrong and dangerous to say that out loud, even when the only ears around are theirs and the (hopefully imaginary, but Hawkmoth is a dick, so who knows) shambling undead, but Alya keeps going. "You still knew each other. I know Rose and Juleka have video of some of those dodgeball games, I'll have to borrow it sometime."  
  
"What does dodgeball have to do with it?" Marinette says, tilting her head back down to glance at Alya from under her shorn hair.  
  
Alya can't help taking a moment to herself to quietly consider that actually, Marinette looks kind of badass with her hair cut knife-short and that maybe she should try it out after all, so she's a little distracted when she says, "Everything? When you're playing on the same team, you both start to move the way you do when we're fighting an akuma. It's unreal, girl, the way you move with each other. Like you're telepathic. You, or at the very least _some part of you_ , definitely _knows_ that he's your partner." She scoffs. "I'm half convinced that's why you fell for him so hard in the first place."  
  
Marinette turns a bright shade of red and Alya grins savagely.  
  
Because the thing is, Alya's thought about it, and she and Nino have talked about it probably too extensively, and Ladybug and Chat Noir met before Marinette and Adrien did. Ladybug and Chat Noir were fighting together and yelling puns and strategies back and forth, and reassuring and challenging each other, before either of them had ever seen the other in class. Alya knows exactly when Marinette flipped over from disliking Adrien to being infatuated with him- she should, she's heard about it often enough.  
  
Alya _knows_ , and keeps it close to her heart like a secret, that Marinette tried to give her the earrings, that Marinette tried to make Alya be Ladybug in her stead, and this much later she's still not sure how to make her friend see that Alya couldn't have taken them because _Marinette_ is Ladybug and Alya is Rena Rouge and Alya is pretty certain by now that was true _before_ they met their kwami. That falls into the realm of things Nino's weirdly quiet about when she asks, which she thinks means she's probably right; that this is who they'd be with their powers or without them.  
  
Alya and Adrien had run into battles with no hesitation right from the start, and Nino has always wanted to protect people and Marinette has never been able to ignore a cry for help, and Alya's sure because she _did_ it that she'd still be running into their battles herself even without Trixx.  
  
So Alya knows about the moment with the umbrella, when Marinette had taken it from Adrien and words had suddenly failed her, but when Alya tries to picture the actual moment it doesn't go quite right in her head. The umbrella twists in her mind, becoming at the very least a representation of Chat Noir's baton, and she thinks it had to be the moment their hands brushed together that's more important than the umbrella anyway.  
  
Nino has confirmed that their weapons are to some extent a subconscious choice, and Alya thinks it's important that Adrien's has no sharp edges, that Marinette's is a toy, that hers is an instrument and Nino's a shield. That, when their subconscious were asked to choose weapons, no one did.  
  
There's another reason (one of so, so many, and wow is it ever a topic that Alya _avoids_ ) that Chloe never could have been Ladybug; Antibug summoned a sword when Ladybug's power gave her marbles. Antibug's Charm gave her a weapon, and Ladybug's Charm suggested asking her partner for help; Alya and Nino have quizzed their friends up one side and down the other about how some of their past fights have actually gone, enough so that Alya sees a pattern where Ladybug's powers often light up all of Chat Noir as part of the solution.  
  
So Alya knows that Marinette thinks she fell for Adrien when he gave her his umbrella. Alya's also very sure that's not correct; she thinks the moment the two of them met in costume, which no one else had actually seen but she's heard a little bit about by now, is probably the real moment they connected, and it's that the act of handing over the umbrella was the first time they were in actual physical contact _outside_ of costume.  
  
"You know each other," Alya repeats when Marinette doesn't respond. Smiling slyly and nudging Marinette's shoulder, she adds, "Like Link and Zelda."  
  
Marinette groans and throws her free arm over her face, which is still burning brightly red. "Don't. Don't do that, Alya. We aren't… destined, or whatever it is you're trying to imply."  
  
"You don't have to be," Alya replies comfortably. "Though it probably wouldn't hurt to ask Plagg and Tikki about that."  
  
Marinette mumbles something.  
  
Taking great joy in unnecessary theatrics, Alya cups one hand around her ear and intones loudly, "What was that?"  
  
Marinette sighs and admits, reluctantly, "We've asked them."  
  
"Oh?" Alya says, genuinely curious now. "What did they say?"  
  
"They don't know," Marinette says. "They said that Ladybug and Chat Noir always exist together, but not always in the same way. Sometimes we're partners. Sometimes they've been siblings. Sometimes they're even enemies, because they exist to keep a balance."  
  
Alya does not miss the way that Marinette separates herself and Adrien from previous Ladybug and Chat Noir, or that she specifically doesn't delineate those who were also partners. Alya's also pretty positive Marinette didn't do it consciously.  
  
"I thought you'd jump at the idea you two are soulmates," Alya says, because she can't _not_.  
  
Unexpectedly, Marinette scowls. "Plagg says there's no such thing as soulmates. He got… very upset about the idea, actually."  
  
"What?" Alya says, taken aback. She's always thought of her own partnership with her kwami as a sort of soul match, so to hear that Plagg's violently opposed is kind of a blow. Then she takes a mental step back to consider herself and Nino and realises that even trying to think of it like it's fate _does_ feel like it's doing their relationship a disservice. Okay, she can see where Plagg is coming from. "How does Tikki feel about it?"  
  
"I don't know." Marinette leans back to lazily flash the knife again. "If he doesn't answer soon, we need a different plan… Tikki refused to say anything about it at all. Plagg started to go on about it, but Tikki stopped him, and I don't know if it was because she didn't want him to explain or because. Well." She hesitates, takes a deep breath, and then says, "Adr- Chat Noir looked really upset when Plagg said that."  
  
"Marinette," Alya says, exasperated. "Of course he was. He's loved Ladybug since your first fight."  
  
"Don't," Marinette says softly.  
  
Alya pushes doggedly on. "You've loved him since his first day of school."  
  
"That was infatuation, Alya, it's not the same."  
  
"Yeah, it was," Alya agrees, a little grudgingly. "At first. But." She pauses significantly. "How did you feel about Chat Noir, that whole time? Not Adrien," she stresses, because her friends are their hero selves in ways that she and Nino simply _aren't_ , but both still tend to talk about it like that isn't true. Which is ridiculous, even their kwami keep telling them that's not how it works, Alya has _heard_ it, but they both persist. "How did you feel about Chat Noir. Who, you know, you'd already met before Adrien, I don't really think you've considered that as much as you should."  
  
"He's my partner." Marinette exhales heavily. "And he's my best friend. You _know_ that, Alya. You've seen us."  
  
"Marinette, he's practically your other _half_ ," Alya says, because soulmates or not there is most definitely _something_ going on with their friend's complementary magic. "Plagg can be wrong, you know? Trixx lies to me deliberately whenever they think it'll be funny." She tries to scowl, but she's way too fond of her kwami and their tricks to make it at all convincing.  Trixx is a blast.  
  
"It's not just Plagg," Marinette says quietly. "It's complicated, but it's like. It's like there are four people involved in this, not two. And maybe Chat Noir can think of Ladybug as a- soulmate and maybe Marinette can think of Adrien that way, but Ladybug can't think that way about Chat Noir yet, and Adrien doesn't think it about Marinette, and it's… stupid. It's stupid and it's hard to explain and I think Plagg's right, anyway."  
  
"You don't have to explain it," Alya points out, though she's reeling a little that Marinette actually _admitted_ to all of that, out loud. She wishes Nino were here, or Trixx. She's not sure they'll believe her. She's not sure _she_ believes she heard it. She would say that she's not sure she's going to tell them, but they're all far too used to sharing these things with each other, by now.  
  
Alya didn't miss that _yet_ , either.  
  
"We don't." Marinette climbs back to her feet, tearing off another part of her overshirt as she gets up.  
  
Alya eyes her warily. Not only is she entirely aware that Marinette shouldn't really be able to rip that cloth that easily, Alya's not sure what she's doing, and sometimes- actually, alarmingly frequently- that leads into insane plans.  
  
(Seriously, when did freefalling off monuments become a _hobby_?)  
  
Marinette takes the strip of cloth and ties it into a makeshift sheath for the knife, hanging it around her hips, and offers Alya a hand up.  
  
"You don't explain it?" Alya asks, accepting the help.  
  
Marinette shrugs. "We don't really talk about it, to be honest." She hauls Alya to her feet with so strong a grip that Alya stumbles until Marinette steadies her. "So it's confusing. Our lives are confusing." She turns and draws her knife at the horizon, using it to point and signal at the same time. "Chat Noir is over that way."  
  
"You sound awfully sure," Alya says, brushing dust from her jeans, deciding to let the rest of the topic drop for now. They _are_ kind of in the middle of their second zombie apocalypse scenario. Which is really unfair, actually, Alya would kind of prefer to be having whatever normal crises students have, but- okay, no she wouldn't, she likes being a superhero too much. Still. Multiple zombie apocalypses in one school year seems like a bit much. Thanks for that, Hawkmoth.  
  
Marinette's smile is a faint, grim thing. It doesn't look right on her at all. "You're the one who was just insisting we have some kind of spiritual bond."  
  
Alya thinks about their battles before she can help it. She thinks about the way those two duck and weave, the times she's seen Ladybug grab Chat Noir's hand and Chat Noir let himself be flung, trustingly, into the heart of a fight; she thinks about the Lucky Charms and how frequently they require Chat Noir's help to work- not just to work better, but to work _at all._  
  
She thinks about Marinette's insistence that they aren't soulmates. And- okay, Alya doesn't _really_ like the idea of soulmates, as much as she likes teasing her friends about it; it seems like such an insult to the relationships she's worked at, when that's so much the fun part of them. It seems like an insult to the ways Ladybug and Chat Noir's partnership has grown deeper and stronger even when the two of them were oblivious to it.  
  
But she thinks, too, about all the times, now that Ladybug isn't always asking for her necklace back and Wayzz is slowly beginning to spend more time with Nino than he does with Master Fu, that Carapace and Rena Rouge have snuck off to train, alone, just the two of them without the others. She and Nino have tried, again and again, to achieve the kind of graceful fluidity their friends have in battle. They've never been able to do it. Rena Rouge just doesn't have the same awareness of her partner's location as Ladybug does, and Carapace can't quite let go enough to trust her the way Chat Noir does with his partner; their relationship is _different._  
  
Their relationship is wonderful and Alya wouldn't give it up for the world, but it _is_ different. She and Nino are not partners in quite the same sense that Marinette and Adrien are (that Ladybug and Chat Noir are, but in her own head Alya doesn't have to separate the two).  
  
It's visible even in relaxation. The two compete- they have to, the four of them (eight of them?) spend a lot of their leisure time playing board games and video games and while they _have_ cooperative ones those definitely aren't in the majority. But. Nino and Alya try not to let the other two team up if they can stop them, because it guarantees she and Nino are about to be curb-stomped; and if they lose interest in a game they lose interest together, not one at a time.  
  
Two nights ago they hadn't been able to pry the two of them away from the television long enough to play at all- they'd been watching anime together and insisting they were studying strategy.  
  
That might even have been true, because the akuma have the kind of battle strategies that Alya used to have to read comics for, but she's still pretty sure her friends just liked having the chance to share their interests with each other.  
  
Alya's not actually too sure how she feels about soulmates outside of a fun hypothetical but now she thinks that- maybe it's more that she doesn't like the idea of a predestined relationship, of love at first sight, and whatever she may have teased about this isn't that.  
  
Nino is the Guardian. They both know that their friends were chosen because they chose to help. That's not destiny, that's strength of character. Alya doubts any of this could ever be so simplified as _destined._  
  
Their relationship is still changing, very visibly now that they all (knowingly) see so much of each other. They'd been watching anime that night with Chat Noir slumped half in Marinette's lap, which is standard when they're transformed, but they _hadn't been_ \- Marinette hadn't been from the start, and Plagg had actually cut off Adrien's transformation at one point and no one had bothered to move, too absorbed in what they were doing. Which was- admittedly analyzing the fight scenes in Fairy Tail, to the point of rewinding and pausing and arguing about how they'd have done things differently (Alya dreads the next fire akuma), but they had been absorbed.  
  
Alya's pulled out of her thoughts (which by now are mostly on a tangent about how no one should be looking to Natsu Dragneel for strategy anyway, holy shit) when Marinette swings her legs over the side of the roof.  
  
"Uh," Alya says, joining her and leaning over, unhappily eyeing the milling dead below them. At least there aren't a lot. This kind of power has to have some limits. She hopes. "Marinette? What are you doing? Exactly?"  
  
"We can't just sit around here waiting," Marinette says, somehow sounding very reasonable even as she's eying their potential descent, presumably into the least inhabited space. There aren't a _lot_ of zombies, sure, but Alya would really like to point out that 'any' is realistically 'too damn many.' After Zombizou she feels plenty justified.  
  
"We can though?" Alya tries. "There are zombies, we probably should, really. I'm sure the guys can figure out where we are, they should be here any time."  
  
"Adrien's at the hospital, maybe he couldn't get from there to here," Marinette says, sounding too sure again, still sounding entirely too calm. It's kind of worrying that she's that calm. Sometimes ( _often_ ) Marinette getting calmer is only a sign that their situation is getting more dangerous.  
  
"Okay," Alya says at last, swinging her legs over the wall as well in spite of herself, because she's certainly not about to stay on this roof _alone_. "So if he can't get here, what makes you think we can get there?"  
  
"Well, you're immune to magic, and I'm our strongest fighter," Marinette says, twisting to sink her hands into the crumbling brickwork and start climbing down the outside of the building.  
  
That should sound like bragging, but also it's entirely true, so Alya sighs and starts climbing down after her friend. "Fair enough. Do we have a strategy for when we get to the ground?"  
  
"Sure," Marinette says. "Soon as our feet hit, get behind me."  
  
Marinette has a flamethrower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i have... some feelings on the matter of soulmates. 
> 
> also wow this is so far from canon after the last few episodes, haha. oh well, i think that ship sailed on the previous fic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> current game: dead of winter-  
> -but a long chapter to get out of this game.

Fire arcs wildly out around them, sending zombies stumbling back and shrieking, and not for the first time Alya is silently grateful that it's Adrien who has Cataclysm and not Marinette. Given half a chance, Marinette tends to be a lot more destructive than the rest of them, and while Alya thinks that's partly because Marinette has Lucky Charm and knows she can fix things Alya _also_ thinks that's not something she ever wants to find out for sure.  
  
Alya's been with Marinette this entire time, where the hell did she even _get_ a flamethrower?  
  
It's not actually a flamethrower- it's a lighter and a can of hairspray, Alya sees once her friend's completed her arc- but she doesn't know when or how Marinette picked them up.  
  
Marinette throws down the empty can of hairspray, tucks the lighter away and draws the wooden board, and tosses Alya the knife with a nod. Alya catches it, somehow, and she is going to have a conversation with her best friend later about not literally throwing sharp weaponry at her out of costume. Actually, she'd prefer no one did it _in_ costume.  
  
She still doesn't know when Marinette got her hands on the lighter and hairspray. She must have found them back in the classroom with the bat and knife.  
  
Seriously, _what kind of school_ -  
  
Alya doesn't get to complete that thought, because there's now a flaming zombie lurching up beside her, and she hasn't played any of her sister's Resident Evil games in years and she didn't expect to _regret it so much_ , holy _shit_. She reels backwards and tries to punch the zombie in the jaw, only to realise in seconds how _incredibly unwise_ that would be and redirect her punch to its sternum. She trades a lesser impact for not putting her hand anywhere near those snapping teeth.  
  
A low groan has her spinning around to kick the legs out from a zombie that's managed to creep up right behind her. When he falls she darts past to stay close to Marinette, because Marinette may have run out of cobbled-together homemade flamethrowers but she's also laying out zombies on either side of them with her board. Even as Alya lashes out at another zombie- with her knife, this time, which she regrets _immediately_ because she did not need to learn what stabbing someone feels like, thanks for _that_ life experience, Hawkmoth- the nails on one end of Marinette's board catch another zombie across the face and- Alya's not watching that.  
  
Marinette looks ready to be sick, too, but it hasn't slowed her down at all and even now she hits much harder than Alya does. Anyone (any _thing_? Alya's not sure anymore and she's _not okay with that_ ) that Marinette downs damn well _stays_ downed, but it's still lucky that they don't have very many opponents.  
  
How long after the apocalypse is this game supposed to be taking place, anyway? Why didn't she bother to read the rules earlier?  
  
Also, entirely too much of their strategy so far has relied on luck, and _Plagg is in here somewhere_. Alya would like Adrien and his _disaster kwami_ to be safely with Ladybug's group as soon as possible.  
  
Seriously, no matter how many times Nino tells her Plagg and Tikki are destruction and creation and not technically luck, Alya knows. She's played dice games with both of them now, _she knows_.  
  
"Come on," Marinette says, grabbing Alya's arm and breaking into a jog, weaving past the burning and twitching remains on the ground. Alya wishes she could close her eyes, but she needs to see where they're going, and that wouldn't keep the smell away besides.  
  
There are a lot of akuma attacks no one remembers in very much detail afterwards. Also not for the first time, Alya wonders exactly what her friends have seen. She and Nino are nearly always there now- but it's still not always, and she and Nino don't have half as many nightmares as their friends.  
  
Not yet, anyway.  
  
Tonight's probably going to finally tip that balance.  
  
They don't run flat out. Everything is covered in ice and snow, and they're honestly lucky that it isn't anywhere near as cold as it should be, but they can't risk tripping. No matter how many zombies they took out together Alya can still hear pursuit behind them. She knows better than to look back, because she's seen enough horror movies and _that's how things catch you_ , but she does keep her bat in a ready position and out of the corner of her eyes she sees Marinette do the same with her board.  
  
The zombies don't quite manage to catch up so they reach the hospital unimpeded. The hospital is way closer than it should be, which makes no sense until Alya closes her eyes and visualizes the game board. They had set the hospital card next to the school, hadn't they? Were they supposed to do that, or was it just lucky that they had?  
  
Marinette and Tikki had set the board so it's probably luck.  
  
 _No matter what Nino says about it._  
  
After tonight, Alya's never letting anyone but those two set the board, just in case. She's suddenly fervently grateful Adrien and Plagg hadn't been the ones to handle set up.  
  
Unlike the school, the area surrounding the hospital is zombie-free so they're able to rush straight into the building. They have to slow down immediately because the inside of the hospital is in far worse shape than the school was; parts of the building are collapsed, there's debris everywhere, and Marinette immediately whirls around to knock an abandoned gurney in front of the doors. Alya moves to help her, scanning the hallway and the blown-open room next to it for more furniture for a barricade, but her heart sinks as she does it.  
  
Marinette's first instinct in each building has been to block their path. So why, seeing as he hasn't come to them yet and is therefore probably still here somewhere, wouldn't Adrien have done the same thing?  
  
Once the doors are thoroughly blocked, Marinette retreats down the main hallway and into a side office, closing her eyes and cocking her head to one side.  
  
"Marinette?" Alya asks uneasily, keeping her bat raised just in case. She really hopes Marinette wasn't bitten outside.  
  
She's not sure how to fix this situation without Ladybug, so she really, _really_ hopes Marinette wasn't bitten.  
  
Oh no, now she knows how Chat Noir feels. She is not about this life, thanks.  
  
Marinette's eyes snap back open, though, and she returns the board to her back and holds out her hand for Alya to return the knife instead. Alya does so gladly; she never wants to see a knife again. She's going to be buttering her bread with a fork for the next month. "He's on the next floor."  
  
Alya is not going to say anything about that apparent ability. She is _not_.  
  
It's killing her, but she is not.  
  
Alya can't keep herself from _thinking_ that there is absolutely no reason Marinette should sound that certain after all, but after that conversation earlier like hell is Alya going to point that out. She's just going to chalk that one up to 'magic is kind of weird' and let it go for now.  
  
Marinette's sensing (or… _whatever_ that is) Adrien on the second floor of a four story building. Hopefully the reason they haven't seen him is nothing more ominous than there being no way up to the roof.  
  
Since all of this started Alya's developed some serious questions about just what is going on with magic in their city, because when she thinks back there have been things that weren't caused by the Miraculous and she is retroactively pretty sure that Pharaoh's little afterlife stunt was not actually related to his being akumatized, but that thought is _terrifying_ so she hasn't brought it up with the others. Still. Their Miraculous are definitely magic, and they'd never heard of them before Hawkmoth, and now magic's everywhere in all their lives; Alya isn't honestly sure anymore what's stopped being impossible. If Marinette and Adrien have some kind of stupid magic homing instincts Alya's just going to roll with it at this point. That's not even the weirdest thing she's seen _tonight_.  
  
They don't find Adrien or Plagg for long enough that Alya does begin to doubt how accurate Marinette's feeling actually is. They've gone over most of the second floor already with no signs of habitation or foraging. On top of that, Alya can only imagine a handful of scenarios where Chat Noir wouldn't immediately come running for Ladybug, almost all of them are bad, and she's not totally sure most of them would stop him. The nature of Miraculous Cure means that he's essentially come back from the _dead_ for her before.  
  
Oh wow that's not a helpful thought _at all_ in their current situation.  
  
"Here, kitty kitty kitty," Marinette is muttering under her breath, checking each room as they go. She checks the larger closets and cupboards, too, searching with a thorough single-mindedness that would be unnerving if Alya didn't know _exactly_ how focused her friends can get on each other. Actually, scratch that, it's still unnerving. "Here kitty… okay seriously where are you, I'm actually getting kind of worried."  
  
It's only because she's still on such high alert (read: intensely paranoid) after the previous attacks, and the fact that she's sticking very close to the wall as a result, that Alya hears him before Marinette does.  
  
"Over here."  
  
He's very quiet, which is enough unlike him that Alya grabs Marinette by the shoulder immediately- and then dodges backwards when she's nearly shanked for her trouble.  
  
"Whoa sorry," Alya gasps, holding her hands up, which would probably work better as a sign of peace if she weren't still holding a bat. "I still forget about that hypervigilance, yikes… I heard him, I think he's in the elevator shaft."  
  
Marinette whirls towards the door immediately, wedging her board into the barely-cracked opening in the same fluid movement.  
  
Seriously. They get _way too focused_.  
  
A faint yelp echoes out from between the doors, still oddly quiet. Alya can't tell if that's a trick of the building or not. Part of her hopes not, because she doesn't want to think that Adrien's been calling back to them this whole time and they've been inadvertently ignoring him. That would be bad enough for anyone on the team but she especially doesn't want to think they've done it to Adrien. The rest of them would mostly be annoyed; he'd be hurt.  
  
"Chat Noir, get back!" Marinette yells and starts prying the doors open with that same single-minded determination.  
  
Rolling her eyes, Alya steps forward and wraps her hands around the edge, yanking the door one way as Marinette shoves in another. Marinette probably doesn't need the help which is… daunting, but it goes faster with a second set of hands. Slowly, hauntingly slowly, the door starts to slide open further.  
  
"As soon as the door's open enough, slip through," Marinette says through gritted teeth. "We can't hold this for long."  
  
For once it's lucky that Adrien is as skinny as he is. He slides through the door sideways just when Alya thinks they can't hold it any longer.  
  
It's less lucky for their situation that it is _Adrien_ who slides through, not Chat Noir, although as soon as he's free he's got his hand cupped over his pajamas in a way that suggests that he does have Plagg with him after all.  
  
He's wearing Ladybug pajamas. With no one transformed in the middle of an obvious akuma attack and with Marinette _right here_ , it's incredibly disconcerting.  
  
(Also, frustrating. He's literally wearing her pajamas. If she'd gotten around to changing for bed before Hawkmoth wrecked their plans Marinette would be wearing his. Alya is going to beat them both over the head with a flute and _no one will ever convict her_ ).  
  
"You're all right," Marinette greets him, audibly relieved.  
  
"Thanks for rescuing me," he says quietly, smiling, rubbing the back of his neck and not meeting their eyes.  
  
"Of course, kitten," Marinette says, her entire demeanor softening as she smiles back at him.  
  
Alya doesn't roll her eyes, but it's a damn near thing. They're still civilians most of the time when they're not transformed but once they're in a high stress situation like this one, their alter egos come out to play, with or without the leather and spandex.  
  
That's an entirely different kind of unhelpful thought and _now is not the time_ -  
  
"Where's Plagg?" Alya asks instead of thinking about that any more. At all. Right now. "And do you know where Nino and Tikki are?"  
  
Adrien eyes her as Marinette swings her board up across her shoulders the way he usually would his baton. At this point Alya doesn't know if Marinette's imitating her partner on purpose or if they're just slowly acquiring each other's body language and she's not going to waste energy trying to figure it out. "I've got Plagg, I was kind of hoping you knew where the others were."  
  
Alya eyes him right back. "We think they're at the stronghold. If Plagg is with you, what happened?"  
  
"At the strong-" Adrien drops his hand and blinks at them. "We're in the _game_?"  
  
Marinette shrugs. "Honestly, it was probably a matter of time."  
  
That's true. It sucks that that's true, but that's what their lives have become. These days Alya reads comics for research purposes. She has a betting pool with Trixx and Plagg about how likely clones are and an ongoing argument with Nino about whether Copycat counts. (Antibug doesn't. That's not an argument).  
  
"We think Trixx is in Hyrule," Alya tells Adrien.  
  
"Lucky Trixx," he mutters, _which is concerning_ , Alya is _concerned_ , before he raises his eyes to meet Marinette's. "I was transformed, but we got cornered on the roof…" He gestures at the elevator doors, now warped so much from their prying that Alya doubts they'll be opening again any time soon.  
  
"Oh," Marinette says sympathetically. "Cataclysm?"  
  
He nods. "Yeah- got us out of the way, but then we got stuck, and timed out, and-" He shrugs. "Well, there's not a lot of food here. Plagg's asleep since we couldn't count on any other recharge."  
  
"There's no food in the _elevator shaft_ , color me surprised," Alya says dryly. "Is there even an _elevator_ in there?"  
  
"Not anymore," he says. "We've just kind of been hanging out in a pile of rubble." He smiles again, but his eyes stay dark and haunted.  
  
Spending really any amount of time trapped here, alone in the dark and the cold and the howling silence, sounds like a waking nightmare to Alya.  
  
Judging by how quickly he moves to Marinette's side and how close he stays, it might have been one for Adrien.  
  
To her credit, Marinette moves in closer to him as well, no sign of flushing or stammering, and hands off the board to him before drawing the knife Alya returned. By the determined glint to her eyes she very much is Ladybug right now even without Tikki, and she's clearly decided treating Adrien as Chat Noir is her best course of action.  
  
Alya really wishes her friends didn't make everything so idiotically complicated. Alya doesn't _want_ to be a voice of reason. That's supposed to be Nino and Wayzz's job.  
  
"Does anyone have any food?" she asks instead of saying anything else. "Because I kind of don't think we're finding any."  
  
Adrien gives her a one-shouldered shrug. "We might. That's part of the game, right? You can scavenge for food?"  
  
Alya sighs. "I guess. And we did find weapons." She hefts her bat. "Well, Mari found us weapons. Doesn't this game have, like, some kind of civilian rescue thing too?" They all consider that for a moment before Alya groans. "Wait, yeah, it does. We just did it." She reaches over, making absolutely sure to telegraph her moves this time, and ruffles Adrien's hair. "Sorry Sunshine, looks like you're our damsel in distress again."  
  
He sighs good-naturedly. "Well, it isn't like it's the first time."  
  
"Can it maybe be the _last_ time, kitty?" Marinette asks wryly.  
  
Alya slaps her forehead, reminded. "Shit, I had a shirt I wanted to give you."  
  
It's strange that these days she can see his ears perk up even when he doesn't actually _have_ them. Plagg's told her before that Adrien picks up a lot more body language off of his transformation than most Chat Noir ever do, but Alya still hadn't really known how much he'd been holding back at first. Now he's relaxed enough around the whole team that she sees it all the time. She's caught him napping in patches of sunlight in the apartment more times than she can count and he still has every cat toy they've ever given him. Which is getting to be a problem, actually, because she and Nino are in a bit of an unofficial contest over that. "You did?"  
  
"Yeah." Alya grins at him. "It says self-rescuing princess. Mari and I have them, too."  
  
The loud cackle rising from Adrien's shirt is the first indication they have that Plagg's awake.  
  
Adrien's still grinning back, though. "Aw, we can all match."  
  
Plagg clambers out of his shirt and onto his shoulder. From the way he's clinging, he's still not up to strength. "Yeah, the kid would love that."  
  
Adrien shrugs, cautiously. "Yeah, I would."  
  
"Well, the sooner we get out of here, the sooner Alya can give you your shirt," Marinette says, waving them forward down the corridor. Alya steps ahead of them, but can't help noticing that Adrien doesn't leave Marinette's side even now.  
  
"Plagg, you feel up to transforming again?" Alya asks the kwami, twisting to duck under a fallen beam. "Also, where are we going?"  
  
Marinette stops. "Oh. I meant to go to the roof, but… you said it's not safe up there?"  
  
Adrien shrugs. "I mean, not for me alone. For all of us it might be."  
  
"No one can transform right now," Alya reminds her friends very loudly, just in case they've forgotten.  
  
Marinette shrugs too. "I've gone after akuma without transforming. We all have."  
  
Alya opens her mouth to argue further, then shuts it when she realises she really can't refute that. Alya herself had been at their first fight, before anyone knew what they were doing, and she'd been involved. Adrien had been involved with Riposte. Marinette had set up a trap for Evillustrator. It's not like it's just the four of them either- Alix and Nathaniel had helped with Reverser, and Kim hadn't hesitated against Syren, and a good portion of their class had been involved with Horrificator and all of them with Zombizou, and wow their entire class might be a little bit crazy, actually. Alya blames that on Chloe being the source of just entirely too many akuma and _forcing_ the rest of them to learn to deal.  
  
Arguably, they still don't know what they're doing, but they're better at it now.  
  
Alya wonders who else was playing games tonight. Max might be in trouble. Shit, Marinette's _dad_ might be in trouble, they should really try to move faster.  
  
Then again Max might also be having the time of his life. They won't admit it but Alya's pretty sure Marinette and Adrien both loved getting to play with a giant mech back when Max was akumatized; it might just depend on what anyone was playing tonight.  
  
 _Someone_ probably got to safely take cover in a Monopoly game.  
  
"Does anyone have any cheese?" Plagg asks, still sprawled on Adrien's shoulder.  
  
"Plagg," Adrien says. "We still don't have food."  
  
"Which is admittedly dumb of us," Alya admits, wrenched out of her own thoughts again. "We really should have some kind of emergency rations at all times."  
  
"I do," Marinette says. "But I keep them in my purse, and Tikki has it. At least, I hope Tikki has it."  
  
Alya sighs. "Which… is sensible. Not currently helpful, but sensible." After all, it isn't like it does Marinette any good without Tikki, and it isn't like Chat Noir isn't usually with her.  
  
"It's not great if I get caught keeping food on me," Adrien says carefully, and Alya scowls when she's sure he isn't looking- the last thing she wants is for Adrien to think it's directed at him.  
  
"I know," Marinette says simply. "I have cheese in my purse, too."  
  
"She's my favourite," Plagg announces. "Kid, hand me over, I'm gonna hitch a ride on her shoulder."  
  
"No," Adrien suggests.  
  
"No," Marinette agrees. "I'm Tikki's."  
  
Alya drops back a bit without them noticing, blinking as she listens to that exchange. It's true that all their kwami refer to their respective humans as their chosen, but something about the way Tikki and Plagg in particular phrase things has always seemed different. It's a lot more… _possessive_ than the casual way Trixx refers to her, or even the more formal way Wayzz refers to Nino.  
  
She tries to picture Plagg or Tikki dividing their time between two chosen the way Wayzz does. She can't do it; they're both way too much a part of their chosen's lives. Alya definitely calls Trixx a friend, and Nino says the same for Wayzz, but it isn't the same as the way Adrien and Marinette's kwami stay with them constantly. Nino may be the actual Guardian, but in a very real sense Tikki and Plagg are guardians for Marinette and Adrien, especially in Adrien's case.  
  
Everyone had tried to convince Adrien to stay in the apartment more but Alya's pretty sure it's Plagg he listened to. Alya caught the destructive little cat god cheating at poker two nights ago and plotting to saran wrap the toilet with Trixx and he's _still_ a better guardian than Gabriel goddamn Agreste.  
  
Unlike Nino, Alya wasn't all that sure that going to the apartment instead was a good idea initially- Gabriel is absolutely a dick, but he's still Adrien's _dad_ , and if no one else is at the apartment at night then it's not much better than Adrien staying home.  
  
(Nino disagrees with her. He insists that no matter how nice Adrien's actual room is, his house isn't a home, and he'd be happier at an apartment full of all their shared memories and laughter. If Adrien and Marinette have really been there so often, and Adrien's been going to Marinette's since before that, then Alya's going to have to admit Nino has been right).  
  
By the time they get to the stairs to the roof, Plagg has revived a little bit but not quite enough for an actual transformation. They swap weapons. Alya, the most used to having a shorter range, winds up with the knife again with extreme reluctance; she trades her bat to Adrien and Marinette ends up with the broken board again.  
  
At least Adrien adjusts easily to the unfamiliar weight of the baseball bat. There's no way they're going to find any approximation of Marinette's usual weapon, and Alya is unhappily aware that she now knows exactly how she feels about stabbing people, even dead people, even dead people that she thankfully doesn't recognise.  
  
Alya had assumed before that the only reason Marinette had gotten interested in fencing lessons was that Adrien took them. Later, it occurred to her that it might be because Chat Noir's a fencer, too. Now, she thinks it's more than either of those things; she thinks maybe the rest of them should join those lessons. It would be nice to be more familiar with weapons that aren't her flute. It would be nice to be familiar with weapons at all before they have to use them.  
  
Clearing the roof is- well, it's not as bad as it could be. It looks like Chat Noir got most of the zombies before his ill-fated retreat, and by the time the three of them take out the remaining handful still on the roof Plagg is zipping around in the air, evidently feeling much better. Alya's just happy that she never has to take her knife back out.  
  
"Think you can transform again, Plagg?" Adrien asks, resting the bat across his shoulders like he would his baton.  
  
"Only one way to know," Plagg says with a shrug. "Claws out, kid."  
  
Moments later Chat Noir shakes himself, looking bemused, and strangely enough immediately checks his pockets. He hands off some wrapped and slightly-squashed cheese to Alya but not before she sees him tucking a familiar-looking lucky charm back into his pocket.  
  
"You know," Alya says, staring down at the cheese for a moment before putting it in her own pocket, "I have, like, six different questions about that."  
  
"Only six?" Marinette says wryly. She, too, is resting her weapon across her shoulders, which is kind of worrying when her weapon includes probably-rusty nails.  
  
Alya wonders if they're all up to date on their tetanus shots. Then she wonders if it matters when they're in some kind of board game hell dimension. Then she decides she's really not interested in pursuing that line of thought much farther, because she enjoys what sanity they can still pretend to maintain. "Okay, at least six. Admittedly a couple of them are variations on 'why does _he_ get pockets?'"  
  
"I don't know, but it's not fair," Marinette tells her.  
  
Chat Noir grins sheepishly and scratches his head. "Well, I can't hide food on me normally, and this way it seems to vanish when I'm not transformed, but I didn't remember to grab it before."  
  
Alya blinks as she recalls something. "Wait a minute, Trixx definitely implied that we chose our outfits. Subconsciously or whatever. Like, mine exists because I'd seen Volpina, so that's what I already thought of for the fox, but…" She trails off. Looks, really looks at both her friends.  
  
One of whom runs along the rooftops in skintight spandex at night, while the other one is currently clad in black leather. With rivets in his ears and a bell at his throat. Alya's seen Ladybug flick that bell and scratch Chat Noir under the chin half a dozen times at the very least.  
  
Alya's suddenly kind of glad Volpina happened.  
  
"Well then, it makes sense that you'd have pockets," Marinette is saying when Alya tunes back in. "You can keep things in your suit that you can't have on you in your civvies."  
  
Alya wonders in despair when they started referring to their normal wear as civvies. She already feels like she's been doing this too long to stay sane and these two started _months_ ahead of her.  
  
"You've got a point there," Chat Noir says. "Anyway, does anyone know how we're getting to Nino?"  
  
"Well, we've got your baton now," Marinette says thoughtfully.  
  
"Which I'm afraid does take fewer passengers than your yo-yo, milady," Chat Noir says dryly.  
  
Alya shrugs at him. "Take Marinette first. Trixx isn't here at all, we don't think, and we know Wayzz isn't, and as soon as we have Ladybug too we'll have more of an advantage."  
  
"We can probably Cataclysm our way out as soon as everyone's together," Marinette points out. "I don't think defeating zombies is actually the goal here. Right, kitty? You should take Alya first."  
  
Chat Noir swings his baton down and leans on it. "You know, just for that, I think I should take you both."  
  
Alya arches an eyebrow, unable to help herself. "Oh, you think you can take us both? You wanna _try_ me, pretty kitty?"  
  
"Alya," Marinette says, exasperated, and Alya grins ruefully. "You know that isn't what he meant."  
  
"You got the Ladybug voice," Chat Noir tells her, grinning himself. "That's almost as bad as getting full named."  
  
"You get the Ladybug voice all the time," Alya points out, even as she finds a belt loop to shove the damn knife through (which is just incredibly unsafe, but needs must, and also they heal pretty well these days. And she's pretty confident that they actually are up to date on their tetanus shots. If they need them. If tetanus is a thing that akumatized magical hell dimensions have. If Ladybug's Miraculous Cure wouldn't heal them all anyway).  
  
Chat Noir moves closer to her and his voice drops into a purr. "Yes, but that's different."  
  
He didn't say that where Marinette could hear them. Alya turns her head, very, very slowly, and fixes him with a stare.  
  
To his credit, Chat Noir does meet her eyes, although he's definitely beginning to flush under his mask.  
  
"You know what, I was not actually prepared for any of this," Alya says under her breath, before readying herself to jump off the roof, hoping that because none of this is technically real she won't take fall damage.  
  
They have been playing _way too many_ video games.  
  
Luckily no one makes any potentially irreversible decisions, because moments later she hears Nino's voice shouting up to them. "Yo! Chat Noir! My dude, have you seen the others?"  
  
"They're up here!" Chat Noir shouts back down, leaning dangerously far over the roof before Marinette grabs his belt and yanks him back.  
  
"Great!" Nino yells, slightly hysterically. Tikki spirals up to them and darts straight to Marinette. "So can one of you get me up there and away from the _ravening undead_? Like, _yesterday_?"  
  
Chat Noir salutes Ladybug as she transforms, drops off the side of the building, and is back up and handing Nino over to Alya in moments.  
  
"That," Nino says, brushing himself off, "Was not fun. That was not fun. There are a bunch of dead people running around down there, and Tikki is not Wayzz, and I regret agreeing to this game, and that was _not fun_."  
  
"We could have been playing Monopoly," Alya tells him. "We could be safely ruining our friendship over who bought Park Place, which, let's face it, was going to be Plagg. Because your kwami cheats, Chat Noir."  
  
"Hey, so does Trixx," Chat Noir says.  
  
"Monopoly is banned for a reason, Alya," Nino interrupts tiredly, leaning on Chat Noir and wiping something off his forehead that Alya really, really hopes is rust.  
  
Cut off from her defense of her own kwami (who, yeah, definitely does cheat but Alya doesn't see why she should have to admit it), Alya glances around the roof instead and says, "Well, this is nostalgic."  
  
Something on the other side of the building moans and Nino snorts, letting Chat Noir wrap an arm around his shoulders as he sways on his feet. "Alya. Dude. _Why_."  
  
"Well it is," Alya tells him, shrugging. "We're even playing a game!"  
  
Nino turns, very slowly, and glares at her. Even knowing that he would never hurt any of them, it's a lot more intimidating than it used to be.  
  
Nino still has a crowbar in one hand and a trash can lid in the other and both of them are streaked with rusty-looking stains. Nino also made it here on foot with Marinette's kwami and no way to transform.  
  
Nino probably should have waited where he was for them, but Alya knows him well enough to know that there's no way he was going to stay put and leave everyone else in danger, even without his Miraculous. Guarding them is just kind of what Nino _does_ now. He scares Alya sometimes, with how devoted he is to keeping everyone safe.  
  
He's so much more cautious than Chat Noir is, but Alya's still gained a lot of sympathy for just how often Ladybug watches her partner dive _towards_ danger.  
  
Also, this situation makes her nervous. Nino's track record with zombies is _not great_.  
  
"About that," Chat Noir says, balancing his baton again. "Anyone know how to leave?"  
  
"Isn't it usually beat the game?" Nino says unhappily.  
  
"Usually?" Alya says, unable to help herself. She can hear her voice pitching higher. " _Usually_?"  
  
Ladybug scans their rooftop with a sigh. "Somehow, I don't think that applies. But I do think we have a better chance of leaving from the stronghold."  
  
"Makes as much sense as anything else that's happening," Alya says, resigned, as Chat Noir grabs hold of Nino and Ladybug grabs hold of Alya and everyone hastily rearranges their assorted weaponry in the interest of no one getting inadvertently stabbed.  
  
Chat Noir and Ladybug are back to having their usual weapons, but Alya notices they keep their scavenged ones, as well.  
  
Nino and Tikki had lucked out, arriving in the stronghold as they did; he keeps his crowbar, and after a brief moment of uncertainty he ends up jury-rigging a system to strap his trash can lid to his back. Alya knows that he's gotten too used to his shield by now to want to go without some kind of approximation.  
  
(Alya strongly suspects that the stronghold had guns. She also knows very well that neither Nino nor Tikki would have touched them).  
  
It takes less time to get to the safehouse than it did to get to the hospital, with Ladybug swinging them over faster than the boys can get there by pole-vaulting. Alya's not completely sure what they're swinging _from_ ; there are vague dark shapes through the snow, but she thinks that if they were to try and get closer to them they wouldn't be able to.  
  
Their lives have gotten really, really weird. Alya's basically accepted that by now, but by the slightly ill look Nino turns on her when she waves as they go by, he hasn't.  
  
"Okay," Alya says when they land on the safehouse roof (because there's no point going inside, they all know what they're like, they know they're going to end up on the roof). "Okay, that can't be right."  
  
"Do I- do I Cataclysm it?" Chat Noir asks, rubbing the back of his neck after Nino hops down.  
  
Nino very hesitantly hefts his crowbar to poke at the weird shimmer in the air that cuts across the roof. "Maybe? Maybe definitely not? It could be… I dunno, a door?"  
  
Alya doesn't entirely want to take her eyes off the strange reality warp in front of them. "D'you think you should spots off and ask Tikki if she knows what's up?" Wayzz is who she really wants to ask, but barring his availability Tikki is always their next choice- Adrien and Alya have been bonding over having the less helpful kwami.  
  
At least Plagg answers them sometimes, even if it's almost never an answer to what they actually asked. Trixx laughs and jokes and teases and changes the subject and Alya doesn't even think it's on purpose. Trixx is just like that.  
  
Alya doesn't actually mind that Trixx is like that, and she doesn't think Plagg could do much of anything that would make Adrien love him any less, but it means that right now Ladybug stares at the not-quite-heat-shimmer, sighs, and says, "Spots off."  
  
Tikki flutters towards the- wind shimmer or reality warp, Alya's not sure what to call it. "It's a portal," the kwami says, sounding surprised. She reaches towards it for a second and then ducks back towards Marinette. "It should be safe, it's just a doorway."  
  
"Okay," Nino says, gripping his crowbar and eying the portal, shifting his weight. He clearly wants to get in front of everyone else, but without Wayzz he's not the strongest of them right now, and Alya's already had a couple conversations with him about not picking up any of Chat Noir's habits.  
  
Speaking of divisions of power, everyone else is intensely relieved no one gave Adrien the shield.  
  
"So do we just… go through it?" Nino continues, warily poking at the reality shimmer with his crowbar. The crowbar sinks into it slightly and he pulls it back out with no sign of resistance.  
  
"Yes," Tikki nods. "It's harmless. You can just walk through."  
  
Chat Noir moves forward and Marinette grabs his hand before he can test their mystery door. "Walk through it to where?"  
  
"I was about to find out," Chat Noir protests, tugging at his arm. Marinette doesn't let go of him.  
  
"Walk through it to where, Tikki?" she repeats.  
  
Tikki shrugs helplessly. "I really don't know, Marinette. But I think it's where Trixx is."  
  
"Well then I'm going," Alya says, against her own better judgement, and starts forward sharply enough that she drags Nino with her for a few steps. She's not even sure when Nino grabbed her arm.   
  
"Babe," Nino says, pained. "We have talked about the charging in thing."  
  
"I am getting my kwami," Alya informs him.  
  
"I get it," Nino says. "But maybe don't jump in without the two of us who actually have their powers right now." He turns a pleading look on Marinette and Chat Noir.  
  
"Fair plan," Chat Noir says, and starts forward again himself, and is similarly stopped by Marinette's hold on him. It's all starting to get a little ridiculous.

Marinette sighs and says, "Tikki, spots on." When she's back in costume she surveys everyone and says dryly, "Guys. It's big enough for all of us to go together, and we don't want to end up split up again."  
  
Alya and Chat Noir both stop and look at each other guiltily.  
  
Nino sighs and links arms with Ladybug.  
  
Chat Noir starts to grin, slyly, and as they head through the portal Alya hears him suggest entirely too cheerfully, "Let's mosey."  
  
"Chat Noir," Ladybug groans, looking like she'd pinch her nose if she only had a hand free. "Why are you _like this_."  
  
Alya misses his response, because they stumble out in the middle of the Lost Woods.


End file.
